


Dozing, Hot and Disturbed

by Nike_SGA



Category: Gentleman Jack (TV)
Genre: Ann Walker is a cinnamon roll, F/F, Masturbation, PWP, also smut, but she's not THAT innocent, filler for s1e02-03, i hear the lake district's very nice this time of year, no-one likes you Catherine, warm tender feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 08:31:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18807505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nike_SGA/pseuds/Nike_SGA
Summary: 'In truth, Ann knows her fatigue has no real physical cause, and is rather borne of the intense boredom that has settled on her shoulders since their arrival in the Lake District, and a yearning for something else. Someone else.'





	Dozing, Hot and Disturbed

**Author's Note:**

> There are a lot of people I blame for this fic, and most of them are twtd.

  
Could not sleep last night. Dozing, hot & disturbed ... a violent longing for a female companion came over me.

        - Anne Lister, Saturday 12 July 1823 [Halifax]

* * *

 

 

Ann sighs as she slips into bed and nestles down amongst plush pillows, closing her eyes against the last of the light as it glows warmly behind the drapes.  Their borrowed house in Eskdale is much smaller than her own home at Lightcliffe, but it is airy and pleasant nonetheless, her temporary bedroom comfortable and well-appointed. She is inordinately tired for having done nothing much at all today, and Catherine, having noticed, had shooed her to her room early, no doubt fretting about her ‘weak spine, and ‘delicate constitution’. In truth, Ann knows her fatigue has no real physical cause, and is rather borne of the intense boredom that has settled on her shoulders since their arrival in the Lake District, and a yearning for something else.

 

Some _one_ else.

 

Ann loves her cousin, she really does, but Catherine’s company - once a source of such delight and pleasure to her - seems tedious and insipid now, and she isn’t sure she can bear the rest of their time together with the good grace that is expected of her. She had mentioned to Miss Lister that she worried three weeks alone with Catherine would lead the other woman to tire of her, but it is becoming extremely apparent to Ann that she should have concerned herself with quite the opposite.

 

Besides which, Ann is still smarting from Catherine’s comments about her friend before their departure for Cumbria.

 

 _Miss Lister_.

 

She scowls a little as she recalls Catherine kneeling in her room, sly and scandalised, as she’d whispered of how Anne Lister _‘couldn’t be trusted in the company of other women’_ , of how people said she was _‘a bit like a man’._ Ann frowns again in frustration, as she had then. There is nothing _mannish_ about Miss Lister, unless one considers confidence and charisma solely masculine traits, and frankly very few of the men Ann has ever met have either in abundance.

 

She shifts a little, as she thinks of Miss Lister’s tall, lean form: the long straight skirt that drapes over her narrow hips and close around her legs, the well-fitted waistcoat that accentuates the dip of her waist and her breasts, the billowing shirt sleeves that fasten delicately at her wrists. She had felt the strength in her arms and shoulders that first meeting at Shibden Hall with the Priestleys, when Anne had turned to shake her hand. So she doesn’t attire herself in a traditionally _womanly_ fashion, but Ann rather envies her the freedom from the voluminous skirts and ruffles the rest of them are burdened to wear.

 

Yes, she is singular and unusual, as Ann had defended her to her cousin, but as far is Ann is concerned, she isn’t anything like _a man._ She is far too appealing.

 

She twists a lock of her loose, golden hair absently between her fingers, as her brow creases in thought.

 

The thing is, Ann is not as unworldly and innocent as her plethora of relations care to believe she is. She knows a part of Miss Lister’s interest in her lies in her vast fortune, and the security she could surely bring to the other woman’s estate, if she were so...inclined. Honestly, she would expect nothing less of a sensible person. But for all her prudence and economic shrewdness, she also knows that Anne Lister is kind; that she once passed an hour or two with a grieving girl and her sister in what must have been to her a quite tiresome circumstance, just because Ann - in an uncharacteristic bolt of bravery - had asked her to; and had stayed and walked the gardens with them even when Ann had been too shy and stuttering to provide any semblance of interesting conversation.

 

She recalls Anne Lister on that day, dressed all in black but somehow still dazzling, and smiling at her in the afternoon sunshine. She trails her fingers from her hair down across her collarbone, and traces mindless patterns on the neckline of her nightgown.

 

There had been no attraction in Miss Lister’s gaze then, she well remembers, for an awkward, coltish girl of nineteen with a painfully reserved nature and too many freckles, but there had been patience, and warmth, of a polite sort of nature. It was a different look to the one she had laid on her at Shibden Hall, their first meeting in almost ten years, when Ann couldn’t fail to notice the slight widening of her eyes and parting of her lips when she turned to find Ann quite changed; ‘grown into herself’, as her aunt liked to call it. No, this time Miss Lister’s eyes had lingered on her face, her hand around hers, and she had seated herself close enough to Ann on the wide couch that she could feel her shirt sleeves brush against her arm every time she moved, and feel the heat of her body even through the layers of her dress. Ann draws a breath in through her nose as she remembers how Miss Lister had shifted beside her, and moved to perch on the arm of the settee when her aunt had arrived, smiling down at Ann again like she had that day in the garden.

 

She likes Anne Lister’s smile. Likes the way it pulls at the edges of her mouth and crinkles the corners of her eyes in conspiratorial amusement. Sometimes, on the verge of sleep, it’s that smile she sees when she closes her eyes. It makes a comfortable warmth coil low in her belly, and flutter and flush across her chest.

 

_I do have very warm, tender feelings for you._

 

Ann wriggles sleepily, the material of her nightgown tickling her skin, as she lets her eyes fall on the small, golden gondola pin on her bedside table, a replacement for the broken paper-knife and far more valuable to her now than Catherine’s gift could ever be. Miss Lister had seemed unusually distressed at the thought of her leaving for so long, and she’d wondered at it then, and wonders at it now. She tucks an arm under her head as she remembers Miss Lister’s sure, steady fingers fastening the little gondola to her shawl, her face close enough to Ann’s that she could study her long, dark lashes as she lowered her eyes in concentration.

 

_Wear it, always; and when you think of me, you’ll feel perfectly safe._

 

Ann lets her fingers drift from her collar down to the top of her thigh, and idly strokes the skin through her nightgown, the way Miss Lister had caressed her jaw as she fondly assured Ann that she was not going to die in the Lake District. Her face had been so close, and Ann had gazed up at her, enraptured by the earnestness in her voice and her expression.

 

_I’ll miss you._

 

 _I’ll miss_ **_you_ **.

 

Ann breathes a little unsteadily as she closes her eyes and thinks of Anne Lister’s striking features, her deep brown eyes and aquiline nose and wide, smiling mouth. Her hand gathers the material at her legs and distractedly she rucks it up so she she can run the pads of her fingers along the exposed skin, and the sensation makes her shiver as Anne’s face coalesces in her mind. She’s not pretty - not conventionally anyway; not in the way Ann has been told she is, or Catherine is, or the way that most men might define it. She’s too sharp and angular where Ann is soft and curved, too dark and tall and knowing for people to call her _pretty._ But she takes Ann’s breath away, with her eyes, and her smile, and her mouth. She makes her ache, the way she’s beginning to ache now.

 

_Have you ever kissed anyone?_

 

Her heart picks up in her chest the way it had then, at the hushed inquiry, her mouth turning dry and her hands trembling uncertainly in her lap.

 

_No._

 

_Perhaps you wouldn’t tell me if you had._

 

She hasn’t, of course. Has never kissed nor been kissed, but _oh_ , she has wanted to. Has wanted to ever since the day Anne Lister came to tea, and she couldn’t even speak, too overwhelmed by her presence and her personality and her charm. She’d thought of little else in the days following, and couldn’t understand it, not back then. Later that night, she’d done this, too - for the first time, alone in her bedroom, spurred on by the memory of Anne’s compelling nature and easy smile. She slides her hand up the soft skin of her thigh to find the warmth pooling between her legs and _oh._

 

She hadn’t understood _this_ , then, either; barely does now, although her hands are far more sure and practiced. Knows only that it thrills and terrifies her in equal measure, and that whenever she does it, it is almost always Anne Lister’s hands she imagines, Anne Lister’s face she sees. Ann groans as her fingers slick though the sticky wetness at the apex of her thighs, and her eyelashes flutter against her cheeks.

 

_So she’s never tried to...to touch you or anything?_

 

_Don’t be absurd._

 

But she has seated herself dangerously near to her on the couch - close, always so close - and every time Ann has felt the start of this weight between her legs and this stirring in her belly and it has shocked her, especially as she has started to recognise it for what it is. She slides her fingers along her folds, through her curls, spreading the dampness on her fingertips and her back arches just a little as it sparks along her spine. No, Anne Lister has never tried to _touch_ her, not in the way she thinks of her and touches herself. Ann’s not sure what she’d do if she did. Her heartbeat stutters erratically at the thought of Anne’s hands skimming upwards to where her own hand rests now, under her skirts and petticoats. She’s never even _kissed_ anyone before.

 

_Have you?_

 

_Wanted to? Every time I come here._

 

She thinks of the low husk of Anne’s voice at her whispered confession, and the way her eyes had dropped to Ann’s lips, heavy and hooded with something she couldn’t identify. Her lips part and she whimpers as she remembers the way Anne had run her thumb over them - _surely you know what I mean_ \- before she traced the line of her jaw with gentle fingers. Her thumb had dragged against her bottom lip, just slightly, just the barest pressure, and Ann whines at the memory as she finds the spot that’s throbbing with want and presses in the same way. It sends waves of pleasure through her nerves; she remembers the timbre of Anne’s voice as she’d talked about _pleasure._

 

Almost unconsciously, she rolls over onto her front as her fingers work between her legs, seeking out more friction and burying her face in her pillow so as not to alert anyone with her sounds. She moans as she thinks of Anne’s delighted laugh at her blush, and the way her eyes twinkled with mischief even as she lamented _I shouldn’t have told you._ There’s an empty feeling inside her, just behind the electric shivers of excitement her fingers are bringing, and she finds herself picturing Anne’s hands as she’d gesticulated emphatically about the truth of her story: _of course it is! It’s Paris!_ Ann sighs and twists, and presses harder against the little nub of nerves she can feel thrumming between her legs and through her body.

 

Her hand is moving instinctively now, her hips rolling against the mattress as she draws tight circles around that point that makes her jerk and shudder and keen. Her breaths are coming frantically, as the ache spreads from between her thighs up her spine and to the tips of her breasts, and she slides her free hand up and under her nightgown to brush her thumb against a hard nipple. She thinks again of Anne Lister’s waistcoats, and wonders about the shape and size of her breasts underneath them, confined by her corsets. Wonders if they would feel like her own, fit her hands like hers do. Her thumb swipes hard across the peak and she turns her head and pants, eyes screwed shut at the sensation.

 

_She can’t be trusted in the company of other women._

 

_Well what does she do to them? Does she bite them?_

 

Ann gasps as she sees Anne’s cocky smile, feels Anne’s _teeth_ against her breast.

 

_I think you’re-_

 

She presses her forehead against the pillow as she speeds up the movement of her hand. She _wants_ , she _wants_ , she wants something she can’t name, and she reaches for it, writhing under her own merciless ministrations. She wants Anne’s smile, and her laugh, and her mouth, _oh_ her mouth. She rubs at herself desperately, the wetness spreading over her fingers, her hand, the tops of her thighs. And it feels _good._ So good.

 

_I think you’re-_

 

She wants to kiss her. She wants to _kiss her_ , and in her mind, in her parlour, she does just that - leaning forward instead of pulling away, firm instead of flustered, and brings her lips to Anne’s. The illicitness of the gesture steals her breath and sends a spike of exhilaration through her. Anne’s hand moves under her skirt and finds her ready.

 

_I think you’re a little bit in love with me._

 

Ann shouts into her pillow as a dizzy ecstasy crashes over her, body spasming wildly and bucking into her hand, squeezing her breast and curling her fingers against herself. _Anne._ She rolls her hips against the flat of her palm as it washes through her, legs trembling and muscles clenching, and she moans long and low as she pulses again and again and again. _Anne. Anne. Anne._ She spirals into a mindless, endless pleasure, and wrings every moment out of it as best she can, until she is limp and spent.

 

When she comes back to herself, she is breathing heavily, her hairline damp with sweat and her fingers sticky between her thighs. She groans as she withdraws her hand, little shocks still running up and down her legs, and wipes it carelessly on the sheet by her side. Her eyes flutter open, and in the dim half-light she catches sight of the gondola pin again, and lets a lazy grin steal across her features. She sinks into the mattress, and sighs.

 

She is yanked out of her reverie by a knock at the door, and her cousin’s voice calling “Ann? Are you alright? I thought I heard…?” She scrambles to reorient herself on the bed, and arrange the rumpled covers as she proclaims herself quite alright, thank you, goodnight, and listens in relief to Catherine’s footsteps retreat down the hall. She settles back against the pillows and huffs out a quiet laugh at herself.

 

A languid drowsiness begins to overtake her, and she lets her eyes drift closed again, her body still humming but appeased, as her limbs grow heavy and she exhales slowly in contentment. Three weeks isn’t so long, really, she thinks as she begins to drift off, a familiar face dancing behind her eyes. And tomorrow, she will be just another day closer to seeing Miss Lister again.

 

Ann falls asleep with a smile.  
  



End file.
